


shredded canvases

by wafflesti



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Death, F/M, Love & Loss, Short One-Shot Kinda, Unrequited Love, angst kinda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-25
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-15 21:22:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29690154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wafflesti/pseuds/wafflesti
Summary: we were left like those shredded canvases in the alleyway behind the gallery after that one day.
Relationships: Armin Arlert/Reader
Kudos: 7





	shredded canvases

Do we even understand the true depths of death? When there’s no guidelines to what comes after this life. Even when we lay our lives on the line for humanity, are we genuinely fearless? Were you scared before you sacrificed yourself?

Sometimes in the night, where the only noise to be heard are crickets, I imagine what it must’ve been like. I feel a pull in my chest from all of the tears shed over your lifeless body, and wonder if you felt that. Sometimes I wonder if I took my own life at this very moment, would I see you in whatever afterlife there is? I sadly don’t know, though I wish I did. Now I am but a shell of a man while you’re just remnants scattered about in the sea.

Did you love me like how I loved you? Did your heart pitter and patter; clang and clatter; Everytime I spoke? Because for me, it was that way. I never felt the need to express it. I never felt the need to express how I wanted you in my life more than I wanted to explore the outside world. I wanted to form a life with you. But what does that matter now?

I’ve never been emotionally stable, but everyone’s saying I’m seeming depressed. Way too calm, which for me, is bad I suppose. I know you wouldn’t want your death to haunt me, but you also know the type of man that I am, and that I’d of course react this way. 

So writing if what I have resorted to while holding regret and guilt heavy in my shredded heart. Were you oblivious to my feelings like how Eren is with Mikasa, or were you just silently rejecting me? Allowing us to stay quite close enough to be best friends, but not quite there when it came to lovers. Why couldn’t you just tell me that you didn’t want me? Why did your last words have to be his name? Did you want to wound me that badly?

Leave it up to you, to even in your final moments, never have the attention off of you. To harm me just as you had done countless times before. Honestly, maybe you had told me before. Maybe, I didn’t listen. Maybe, I just pretended as if you’d come around and instantly love me for who I was. I was so wrong.

There’s a lot that had me drawn to you like a pretty canvas. Like the ones we saw that time at that art gallery. The day that I considered a date but you quickly laughed off. As if the thought of going on a date with me physically wounded you.

As cliché as it’s going to sound, no words can fully describe your beauty inside and out. The beauty that I always saw yet never pointed out directly to you. But I will try to explain it and do you justice even at a time like this, even when you may not deserve it.

To be honest, I’m hurting, yes. But as I’ve been writing more & realizing more, I was blinded by who I thought you were. I can’t blame you for that, I know. But I sketched you out to be such a pretty soul on paper, yet you came out splattered ugly gray’s and brown’s instead. You were one of the rudest people I knew, up there with Captain Levi, yet with Eren, Mikasa, and even I at slight times, you were close enough to kind. It was hard to find you smiling but every year or so you did, maybe even crack a little snort or too as well. You had quite the long and thicker nose that you swore you hated, but it suited you well enough that it made me like you even more. It stuck out, literally, but to me, it made you so much more pretty. Your hair was a mix of wolf’s fir, all grey’s and black’s and white’s, yet you made it look so good. It framed your beautiful face in such a way that you made elders jealous when they couldn’t pull off the colors like you. Nobody could ever embody your aura. No one could pull off just anything like how you could.

This letter, is just as conflicting as my feelings for you are now. It’s been some time since your gruesome demise, and everyday I despise you a little more. Or I try to, at least.

You acted like you wanted nothing to do with me, yet who did you cry on when your ex cheated on you with another man? Who went out of their way to steal you goods, even though I had constant regret after? Why did I do so much for you, when you couldn’t even be honest with me? Did it hurt you to tell the truth? I’d love the answer to that.

But I could never forget that one night. You begged me to never tell a soul yet here I am spilling all of my secrets to a lifeless piece of paper. You know I’d never tell anyways. You were always getting yourself hurt by men or women who could give two shits about you. Who looked at you like a piece of meat before sex, ate you up, then spit your feelings right back out after. Is that what you liked? Because you know I’d never do that.

Yet you insisted that I hurt you. You wanted to feel pain. You wanted so much that I couldn’t offer and it was so overwhelming that I almost cried. We kissed for a second but your hands got too touchy and I couldn’t take it. I said stop, you did, then it got awkward. 

I guess I’m glad we stopped when we did, because if we had fucked, I would’ve been tied to you. More than I already am. Soul tied. I frankly wouldn’t have been able to live without you if you still died like this. I don’t want that. I also didn’t wanna fuck you on terms where it was clear that you were thinking of him. 

You didn’t have to say it. The looks on your face whenever he passed by said enough. The hurt on your face in your eyes said it too. But I chose to act like I didn’t see it, in order to avoid confrontation, and to still keep pretending that you may have wanted me. A doll I was, waiting to be used and moved, while you sat around playing with other’s strings’. 

Eren and I will always be close, and I’d never let a girl get in between that, but I couldn’t help but feel envy whenever he spoke your name like it was nothing. When he had you wrapped around his finger and knew you’d always come running back. And you always did. Not even sparing a glance my way. Except for when you needed your selfish validation like how I needed knowledge to fuel me.

I don’t know when I’ll be over you. Every bone in my body tells me to despise you, yet I can list 206 reasons why I shouldn’t. Love is chicken. Or maybe I am chicken. Maybe it’s both. But either way, love shreds you to pieces in the end, and I just stay cowardly, looking for any way to love you in person again.

**Author's Note:**

> this idea randomly came to me & idk but it’s kinda good? so I’m submitting aha yeah I don’t consider myself a poet but I’m pretty proud of this & actually finishing my thghts for once.


End file.
